


confessions

by jilliancares



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Double Penetration, First Time, M/M, MerMay, Smut, imma tell you that now, lance has two dicks, mermaid lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:02:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24473983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jilliancares/pseuds/jilliancares
Summary: “So how do you prove it, then? How do humans show their love?”
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 61
Kudos: 951





	confessions

**Author's Note:**

> this was prompted by @luscena_nsfw on twitter!

As the stories tell it, the mermaid is supposed to be the one to save the human. Or kill them, more likely.

Living in a seaside city, mermaid stories are only to be expected. No one actually believes them, of course, but that’s never stopped crazy sailors from telling tales that they swore were true after a couple pints down at the bar. Stories of strange shapes in the ocean, stories of drowned captains and saved shipmates.

It’s bullshit, of course. It’s simply fantasy, the kind of far-fetched stories that accompany any small town. The monsters that lived in the woods, the fairies that watched over the mountains. And, when you lived by the sea, the mermaids that resided there, scarcely any human who saw them living to tell the tale.

And Keith doesn’t consider himself a skeptic, either. He believes in everything that’s reasonable. Ghosts? Of course. Demons? Probably. But mermaids? Absolutely not.

The stories are always contradictory, too.  _ They’re so beautiful, it’s impossible to comprehend them after seeing them, their beauty unimaginable to the human eye _ . Or,  _ they’re so monstrous, the brain chooses to forget that terror, their teeth and claws as sharp as blades, their eyes pitch black. _

And their actions are just as widely disputed.  _ Mermaids are gracious. They’ll save you during a storm, leading your ship to safety and ensuring your survival _ . Or,  _ they’ll drown your crew, singing from the depths and encouraging them to jump overboard, only for them to be lost to the violent tides of the sea. _

So, Keith doesn’t believe in mermaids. He barely ever spares a thought for them, save when someone else is talking about them and he gets the opportunity to scoff. Even walking home in a storm, the thought doesn’t cross his mind.

His home is high above the cliffs. Far away from most of the other homes in their little town, all gathered together close to the boardwalk. But this house had been cheap and run-down, and with a little elbow grease, Keith had made it livable for himself. He’s high enough that any tsunami wouldn’t be able to destroy his home, and lucky enough that no hurricane had yet to do so.

The only bad thing about it is the walk from the grocery store to his home, a long, winding path that he’d learned by heart, trekking across the beach and along the cliffs and finally up to the dirt path on the grass, which led to his house. He’s maybe halfway there, soaked to the bone and hoping his groceries won’t be made inedible, when he sees it. Or hears it, more accurately.

It should almost be impossible for him to discern. That quiet gasp, between one crash of the waves and the next, in a moment when thunder isn’t rumbling overhead. A gasp that draws Keith’s attention, that has him pausing on the wet sand, looking toward the rocks at the edge of the water.

There, something glimmers. A piece of sea glass, maybe, except it should’ve been washed away in a storm like this. It’s bright blue, glinting in the next flash of lighting, and some force of curiosity drives Keith, has him diverting from the well-known path to his house and down to the water instead.

And, in that moment, Keith’s life changes forever.

Because he walks around the outcropping of rocks, coming closer to the water than he usually bothers to, not caring to swim, and there, he sees it. Sees  _ him _ .

It absolutely shouldn’t be possible. The first thought through Keith’s mind is that it’s a trick, somehow. That someone’s playing a prank on him, or that it’s not even real. Maybe someone made a life-like model and left it here for gullible people like him to freak out over.

But then it — he —  _ the mermaid _ — catches sight of him and gasps, making it obvious that he’s an actual, living thing. And it’s as the mermaid is trying to squirm away, back to the safety of the water, that Keith realizes he’s injured. There’s blood pooling on the sand around him and maybe he’s not supposed to look that pale in the first place.

Keith’s normally pretty good at minding his own business. Not butting in where he’s not needed and barely talking to anyone in town at all, other than the few interactions he has at work or when shopping for groceries. So Keith should maybe probably just turn around and pretend he never even noticed the actual living, breathing mermaid in front of him, but Keith can’t for the life of him tear his eyes away or even take a step back.

Plus, if he does nothing, he’s not sure this mermaid will be living and breathing for much longer.

“Are you okay?” he blurts, moving closer despite himself.

The mermaid bares its teeth at him — sharp and deadly-looking, and Keith gets the hint. He stops where he is, an arm’s length from the mermaid. At that, the mermaid grins.

“Just peachy,” he says, his voice sounding completely ordinary. Keith isn’t sure why he expected something else. Something otherworldly, either grating or lilting.

“You’re bleeding,” Keith points out.

The mermaid gasps, obnoxiously sarcastic. “Holy shit, where?!” he says, looking around dramatically.

Keith squats down, trying to get a closer look. Thunder booms overhead, the sky lighting up immediately afterward, and the mermaid flinches. Just barely.

In the brief flash of light, Keith can see the mermaid’s injury. Ragged, torn flesh along his side, no longer gushing blood, but still slick and shiny. Fresh.

“Did a shark bite you?” Keith asks.

The mermaid snorts. “Why the fuck would a shark bite me?” he says. “They’re super chill. They help us hunt, sometimes.”

“Okay, then what happened?”

The mermaid frowns. Pouts, really. “None of your business,” he says.

“You need to be keeping pressure on that,” Keith says.

The mermaid looks between Keith and his wound. “What?”

“Have you never gotten injured before?”

The mermaid flaps his tail, wincing immediately with the movement. It looks oddly like a shrug. “An injury like this is a death sentence,” he says, and then waves his hand airily. “Run along, please. Leave me to die in peace.”

Keith gapes in the face of this mermaid’s nonchalance at the prospect of death and then scoots forward, ignoring the request despite the fact that the mermaid could totally rip him apart with those teeth. Hopefully he can’t manage to close the distance between them with the state of his injury.

“What are you doing?” the mermaid demands, his voice suddenly dark and dangerous, and Keith scoots up right next to him. He presses down hard against the wound, ignoring the shocked inhale the mermaid responds with. The wound is slick with rain and blood, and the mermaid’s tail twitches once Keith has his hands on him.

“We can patch this up,” Keith explains. “It’s not a death sentence."

“I can’t swim like this,” the mermaid says. “And I’m nowhere close to the cove. No one will realize I’m missing until morning, and by then it’ll be too late for any healers to get to me.”

“Good thing I have some practice in first aid, then, huh?” Keith returns. The mermaid just stares at him, wary and breathing slightly faster now. Maybe he thinks Keith is going to kill him. Or drag him farther away from the water, ensuring that he dies away from his home. But Keith would never be that cruel.

Keith points, his finger angled toward the outline of his house on the cliff above them. “That’s my house,” he says. “I have first aid supplies in there, and I can be back in five minutes with everything we need to patch this up. If you keep pressure on your wound like this, you won’t bleed out.”

“Why are you helping me?” the mermaid says, his voice oddly quiet now. Almost emotionless. “What’s in it for you?”

“Nothing,” Keith says. “I just want to help.”

With that, the mermaid’s hands sneak down to replace his, imitating the position Keith had his hands in. Keith stands, slowly, and stares down at the mermaid.

“Five minutes,” he promises. “Just hang tight. I’ll be right back.”

With that, he turns and races toward the cliffs. He scrambles up the rocks and onto the dirt path, sprinting the rest of the way to his house. There, he grabs his first aid kit along with a flashlight, throwing his almost-forgotten grocery bag unceremoniously by the door. Keith makes it back down to the beach in record time — he was probably gone for only three minutes, tops — and is pleasantly surprised to see the mermaid still laying there on the beach, his eyes closed now. Keith almost expected him to be gone when he returned, either sucked into the sea or proven to just be some sort of hallucination on Keith’s part.

“You’re back,” the mermaid says, his eyes peeling open once Keith slides to a stop beside him.

“You sound surprised.”

“Humans are supposed to be cruel,” the mermaid says simply. “Go ahead, heal my wounds. See if you can save my life. You might get something out of it.”

Keith ignores him, placing the first aid kit and flashlight on his stomach, away from the wound. “I’m going to drag you under this part of the cliff,” Keith warns him. “That way your bandages won’t get wet.”

“Dry bandages?” the mermaid says, sounding incredulous, but Keith just reaches out his hands and the mermaid grabs them with a reluctant-sounding sigh, their bloody fingers almost slipping away from each other. Keith grips hard and pulls, struggling to pull the mermaid and all his weight under the edge of the cliffs, where the rain can’t reach them and the thunder sounds a fraction quieter.

He goes back to kneeling in the sand beside the mermaid and hands him the flashlight, already on. “Keep the light on your wound,” Keith instructs. “I’ll need to see it to sew it up.”

“Sew?” the mermaid says, and when he sees the needle Keith pulls out of the kit, he flinches. “Humans are barbaric.”

Keith ignores him. “I’m cleaning it first,” he says, just to keep the mermaid in the loop, and he uses cloths and hydrogen peroxide to clean the germs and the sand from the wound in the mermaid’s side. He flinches as the alcohol stings but doesn’t verbally complain. Keith wipes the area dry, the blood having slowed down enough that he should be able to sew him up quickly without much trouble. “Hold still,” he instructs, before lifting a lighter and burning the tip of the needle.

“Woah,” the mermaid breathes, staring at the flickering light. Keith threads the needle and gets to work, ignoring the mermaid’s hisses of complaint. It only takes a few minutes to stitch the wound — sloppily, but good enough to get the job done — and he bandages it too, sure to keep any more sand from getting inside. He returns all the materials back to the first aid kit as the mermaid props himself up on one elbow, craning his neck to get a look at his side.

“And that heals it?” he asks, reaching down to touch the bandage.

“It helps you heal yourself,” Keith says. “The stitches hold your skin together so that it can heal, and the bandage keeps anything from getting into your wound.”

The mermaid stares at him for a second, his eyes analyzing, before saying, “Lance.”

“What?”

“Lance,” he repeats. “That’s my name. You know, almost as cool as Trident, but not actually?”

Keith clamps down on a smile. “I’m Keith.”

“Weird name,” Lance decides. And then, “Thank you, by the way.”

“You won’t be able to swim for a bit,” Keith says. “You don’t want to get it wet. Once it’s healed enough, you can go and have your healers fix it up their way. You won’t die out of the water, right?”

“Nah,” Lance says, crossing his arms behind his head and staring up at the cliffs above them. “I can breathe just fine up here. My tail’s gonna get all dry and itchy, but that’s a small price to pay for getting to live.”

Keith scoots back onto his butt, realizing that his knees are aching from sitting on them for so long. He pulls them up and wraps his arms around them, staring down at the mermaid before him.

Lance.

“So,” Keith says. “I believe you said I might get a prize, for saving your life?” he teases.

Lance turns his head, looking at him. Keith realizes then that his eyes are glowing, just barely. Like bioluminescent algae.

“I did give you a prize,” Lance says. “I gave you my name.”

Keith laughs. “Interesting prize,” he says simply. “Do mermaids not usually share their names with each other?”

“With  _ humans _ ,” Lance corrects. “I don’t think you understand. Me giving you my name is not the same as you giving me yours.”

“It’s not?”

Lance smirks. “Our names hold power. If you so much as say my name, I’ll hear you, no matter where I am. You now have the power to call on me anytime you want.”

Keith gapes at him.

“I don’t have to come, of course. But if you’re annoying and keep saying it over and over, it’ll probably drive me insane. So. I’ll likely turn up.”

“I won’t say it if you don’t want me to,” Keith says immediately, feeling suddenly guilty.

Lance scoffs. “I wouldn’t have given it to you if I wasn’t prepared to return,” he says. “You’re an interesting human. I want to learn more about you.”

“About me?” Keith says. “Not humans in general?”

Lance looks back to the cliffs above them, away from Keith. “Humans in general didn’t save my life. You did.”

Keith spends the rest of the night sitting by Lance. He makes a few trips to the ocean, grabbing buckets of water so that Lance won’t have to put up with a dry and itchy tail, and Lance gives him this odd and calculating look anytime Keith does something nice for him. He frets about Lance starving without any fish to eat and Lance laughs at him, claiming that skipping a meal isn’t going to kill him.

They stay together until the sun’s well above the horizon and Lance pushes himself up with his elbows. “Time to go,” he says.

“Your stitches,” Keith says immediately, but Lance pulls the bandage away, revealing a wound that looks three-days old rather than a handful of hours.

“The healers can do the rest,” Lance promises. “Drag me to the water?”

So Keith does, clamping his hands around those oddly webbed ones and drags Lance back to the water. The second Lance is in it, he seems rejuvenated, moving with ease along the shallow shore.

“Thanks again for all your help,” Lance tells him, staring up at him. Keith nods, still not quite sure whether to believe that any of this actually happened.

“No problem,” Keith says.

“See ya!” Lance says, grinning with those wicked teeth, and the next wave swallows him, not a trace of the mermaid to be found. Keith stands there for a while, staring at the indentations Lance’s body had made in the sand and convincing himself that all of it had been real.

\--

Weeks later, Keith still hasn’t said Lance’s name. It feels like taking advantage of him, and Keith’s not sure it’ll work in the first place. Lance could’ve lied to him about that name thing, and Keith would have no way of knowing any better. Lance is the only mermaid he’s ever met. He could tell him that mermaids can turn invisible and Keith would have no way of finding out whether he was lying or not.

He kind of just silently decides to not do anything about it. He doesn’t want Lance to feel indebted to him just because Keith did him a favor, so he keeps his mouth shut and tries to stop thinking about him all the time, about the looks Lance had given him and the way his hands had felt in Keith’s. About the softness of his voice and the sharpness of his teeth.

It’s harder than Keith expects it to be, but he does it anyway. He goes to work and serves coffee to the patrons, most of them regulars, because not many people come to this lonely stretch of beach for a vacation. He argues with his coworkers and buys groceries every couple of days, because he never remembers to keep a list and always ends up buying two or three items at a time whenever he needs them.

He walks to and from town, trying hard not to stare at the stretch of beach where he found Lance. He keeps his windows open, like usual, and tries not to stare down at the ocean below, wondering just what lies within it.

He tries to live his life the exact same way he always has, even though it feels impossible.

And then, when two weeks becomes three, and three becomes four, and Keith has almost managed to convince himself that the whole thing was an anomaly that he’d never have to think about again — Lance comes to him.

Keith’s walking home, staring into the distance as he always does when passing this particular rocky area, when a voice calls, “Didn’t want to see me again, huh?”

Keith freezes, dragging his eyes toward the shore and finding Lance lounging on one of the rocks, his chin propped on crossed arms and his tail dangling lazily over the rock behind him, the tips of it trailing back and forth in the sand below. Lance must’ve positioned himself up there when the tide was still high.

Immediately, Keith’s path diverts. His feet carry him toward Lance rather than home, and he stops before the rock, finding himself having to look up at him.

“I didn’t want to take advantage of you,” Keith says.

“I told you I was curious about you,” Lance answers, and he stretches an arm out from under him, reaching toward Keith. He finds and grabs a lock of Keith’s hair, twisting it idly between his fingers. “Are you not curious about me?”

“Of course I am,” Keith says, somehow more open with this mermaid than any of the people he talks to daily. “Aren’t you afraid to be laying here? Anyone could see you.”

“I’ve watched this beach for the past moon,” Lance says. “No one ever comes here but you.”

Keith finds himself blushing, just a little, at the thought that Lance had been watching this beach, watching  _ him _ , this entire time.

“I want to show you something,” Lance says, before Keith can think of anything to say. “Help me off this rock?”

It’s a lot more work, getting Lance off the rock and back into the ocean rather than just dragging him through the sand, but he does it. Lance doesn’t even have a scar from his injury, he notices, not even where the stitches were. They must’ve been removed easily with those sharp teeth.

Once in the water, Lance swims along the shallows, Keith keeping pace with him on the beach. Lance stops once the cliff reaches the ocean, the waves crashing into it and the sand ending against its side, leaving nowhere for Keith to go.

“Trust me?” Lance says, and Keith probably shouldn’t. He doesn’t know a thing about mermaids. Doesn’t know if Lance came back only to kill him. Doesn’t know what Lance even wants to show him.

But, “Yes,” he says, and then Lance gestures to the cliff.

“You look fit enough,” he says. “Climb along the side of the cliff. There’s a cave a little way down.”

So Keith grabs onto the cliff, finding a foothold, and starts traversing along it, shimmying sideways along the cliff until he comes across the cave Lance mentioned. His shoes splash down into water — a tiny walkway luckily high enough for Keith to walk on — and as he slips further into the cave, it slopes upward, leading Keith to dry land.

Lance, seeming proud of himself, swims alongside him in the deeper water. “Even at high tide, this thing doesn’t fill up all the way. You never knew this was here?”

“No,” Keith admits. “When did you find it?”

“When I was waiting to see you walk past the beach again. Where do you go every day?”

“Work,” Keith says simply, settling onto the ground where it’s dry. Lance swims as close to him as possible, resting his arms on the ground as his tail extends behind him. “You really wanted to see me again, huh?” he says, looking around the cave. There are a ton of shells lining the water, and below Lance, there’s some moss that glows faintly. Keith can’t help but think the cave wasn’t this decked out naturally.

“We’re not supposed to talk to humans,” Lance says. “I mean, it’s not strictly against the rules, but it’s implied. Everyone knows that humans are dangerous.”

“Right,” Keith agrees.

“But you saved my life,” Lance says, and his smile is gentle and soft and adoring. “So I guess not all humans are dangerous.”

“Are mermaids? Dangerous, I mean.”

“They can be, I guess,” Lance says. “There are some assholes out there. Sometimes mermaids kill each other. Sometimes they steal things or hurt each other.”

“It’s the same with humans,” Keith says. “There are bad people, but there are good people too. If the wrong human had seen you, you could’ve been captured and studied. Humans think that mermaids are myths.”

“ _ Weird _ ,” Lance says. “I thought you just left us alone. Or were scared of us, or something.”

“When I first saw you, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Keith says.

“When I first saw you, I thought you were gonna steal my scales and make jewelry out of them,” Lance replies, and Keith’s laugh echoes through the cavern.

That cavern soon becomes as familiar to Keith as his own home. And Lance becomes the first real friend he’s ever made.

\--

“C’mooon, the water’s fine,” Lance whines, tugging incessantly at Keith’s foot. Keith’s laying on the cave above Lance, who’s been trying to persuade him to join him in the water for the past twenty minutes. Except it’s already dark out and Keith knows for a fact that the water’s freezing and Lance’s definition of “fine” is vastly different from his own.

“I’ll freeze,” Keith says.

“You won’t,” Lance persists. “I’ll keep you warm.”

Keith looks at him and Lance’s face shines in the low light. The lanterns are lit and the reflections from them are bouncing all around the cave, thanks to Lance and the constant motion of the water. The string lights are off, only because they’ve run out of batteries again, and when Lance gets this mischievous smirk on his face, Keith has half a mind to roll as far away from him as possible. It’s because of that smirk that all the books Keith has stashed away in here are water damaged, most of the pillows stiff with saltwater.

“More like I’ll keep you warm,” Keith scoffs, staying right where he is despite knowing there’s a good chance Lance is going to try to drag him into the water. He’ll have to walk home in salty, soaked clothes, but that’s an occurrence he’s grown painfully used to.

Sometimes, Lance will lift himself out of the water to hang out on the land with Keith, but there’s something he really enjoys about dragging Keith into the water. He likes to watch Keith tread to stay afloat, likes to swim around him, his tail brushing up against Keith, while Keith desperately tries to figure out if the tide is finally low enough for his feet to touch the bottom.

Despite Keith’s protests, he doesn’t really mind going into the water with Lance, though he usually likes to strip down to his boxers first. The two of them can easily spend hours together, and half the time Lance is already here when Keith arrives without Keith even having to invoke the use of his name.

“I can take you for a swim again,” Lance presses, as if the times they’d done that before hadn’t been utterly terrifying for Keith. Lance would grab hold of him and drag them out into the open ocean, trailing Keith behind him as he swam at speeds that shouldn’t have been possible. They’d breach the surface and Keith would gasp for air before Lance would drag him back under again, trying to show him all the coolest parts of the ocean near the shore before Keith would need to breathe again.

Lance’s hand inches across the ground between them and Keith slides his legs away casually, teasing. Lance gets this glint in his eye and pounces like a cat as Keith struggles, flipping onto his stomach and trying to crawl away before he can be pulled in.

Lance has hold of both of his legs and is perfectly poised to drag him into the water when Keith’s phone rings, the sound harsh and loud in the peace of their cave. They both freeze, Keith moments away from being yanked into the icy water and considering thanking his savior, whoever it is.

The second he sees the caller ID, however, all thoughts of gratitude escape his mind.

“Hello?” he says, sliding to answer and holding the phone up to his ear. Lance is watching him, enraptured, because he’s always been obsessed with Keith’s phone. With anything he can’t find in the ocean, really.

He’s taken a huge liking to the few games Keith has on his phone (he’s casually downloaded a few more, since meeting Lance) as well as the videos Keith shows him on the internet. He’s especially intrigued by the camera function and he’s obsessed with Snapchat and all its filters. Keith even made him an Instagram, and Lance has become a bit of a thirst trap, seeing as he only ever posts shirtless pictures. He never feels embarrassed taking pictures in front of Keith and more often than not drags Keith into frame, wanting a picture of the two of them together (along with anything else he can get the camera pointed toward. Keith’s camera roll has never been more cluttered, especially not with random things he’d never bother to take a picture of, like the surface of the water or a stack of books or Lance’s scales up close or Keith’s own hands.)

(He’s never had the heart to delete any of them, though, especially because Lance likes to scroll through his pictures and look back at them. He gets especially excited whenever he sees Keith’s added his own pictures as well, usually screenshots of memes or a picture of his work schedule.)

“Keith,” sighs his manager on the other end, sounding relieved. Lance has managed to pull both of Keith’s shoes off and is examining his feet critically. In the months since they became friends, Lance has done his best to examine every part of him, his never-ending tirade of questions strangely endearing.

He’s endlessly fascinated with Keith’s legs, since it’s the biggest difference between the two of them, but there are a thousand more things he likes about Keith. Like the mobility of his fingers, unhindered by webs. Or the smooth skin on the sides of his throat, unadorned by gills. Or the hundreds of times he’s tried to yank Keith’s pants down, unceasingly confused by humans and their need for clothes.

“What’s up?” Keith says, as Lance carefully grabs his pinky toe and pulls. Keith twists away from him, ticklish.

“Shelly called in sick,” his manager says. “I know this is really last minute, but is there any way you could come into work? I’ll give you pay and a half.”

On one hand, Keith really doesn’t want to go to work. On the other, the extra money means he wouldn’t have to budget his groceries so strictly next week. Also, if he doesn’t go in, whoever’s there now is going to have to stay for a whole extra shift, which Keith knows from experience is horrible. He bites down on his sigh and tells his manager that he can come in, shaking Lance’s hands off and getting to his feet.

“You have to go?” Lance pouts, following Keith around the rim of the pool as Keith gathers his belongings.

“Yeah, they need me to cover a shift,” Keith says. Lance frowns, and then brightens.

“You can use the extra money to buy new batteries!” Lance says, pointing toward the dead string lights. They don’t have anything like money where Lance comes from — it’s more of a community of sharing, where everyone puts in the work and benefits from it equally — and money and the cost of things has always been a hard concept for him to grasp. Keith doesn’t have the heart to tell him that batteries aren’t all that expensive.

“I’ll bring more batteries the next time I come,” Keith promises. Lance glides alongside him, belly up, as Keith clambers to the edge of the cave and climbs onto the rocky outcrop, back toward the beach.

“And I’ll bring a new treasure,” Lance decides. “Something shiny.”

“Don’t be mad at me when you end up coming back with another pair of glasses,” Keith teases.

“How can they  _ not _ be treasure?” Lance protests. “And how can you tell they’re all glasses?! They look different!”

Keith just grins at him as he jumps down from the cliff, landing firmly on the sand. “I’ll see you later,” he says, and Lance flicks his tail at him for disappearing beneath the waves with barely a ripple.

\--

_ “And she said, ‘You can’t. You can’t love me the way I love you,’” _ Keith reads, splayed on his stomach next to the pool. Lance is almost completely out of the water, trying to look over Keith’s shoulder as he reads. He can’t read at all, because mermaids don’t have any written language and have no need to learn how to read, but he’s endless fascinated by it. He likes to watch as Keith turns the pages.

_ “The way he looked at her made her feel weak inside. Weak and strong, excited and nervous. A hundred contradictions that could only be summed up in one feeling.” _

Lance is tense beside him, and Keith can feel the expectation and anticipation radiating off of him.

_ “‘I do,’ he told her. ‘I do love you. I have all this time — can’t you tell?’ And he cupped her face with his hands, his thumbs brushing over her cheekbones. Her eyes shone as she looked at him.” _

The book is punched out of Keith’s hands with a shriek, at which point Lance dives into the pool and disappears. Keith stares at the water with his mouth hanging open, blinking.

“Lance?” he says.

Lance bursts back through the surface, spraying water everywhere, with his hands over his eyes. He’s grinning wildly. “Oh my God!” he says.

“You good?”

“They’re  _ in love _ ,” Lance yells, slamming his hands down on the ground beside Keith. “They made it sound so easy.” And then, so quietly that Keith wouldn’t have been able to hear him were it not for the acoustics in the cave:  _ “I want that.” _

Keith sits up, because he can tell this is going to be an Interesting Conversation. The kind of conversations that they have sometimes where they realize that life is vastly different for the two of them. Like when Keith talked about work and money, or when Lance asked why Keith liked to close his eyes and just lay there sometimes, revealing that apparently, mermaids don’t sleep.

“You want to fall in love?” Keith presses, feeling something in his chest tighten. His lungs, maybe. His heart, more likely. His legs slip into the water, his shoes already on the opposite side of the cave.

“So much,” Lance says eagerly, floating forward to grip the side of the pool. His eyes are wide as he looks at Keith, full of want and adoration. This desire for something so simple, so easy, so natural. “But mermaids rarely fall in love.”

That gives Keith pause, and not for good reason. He knows that the two of them are different in more ways than maybe he’ll ever truly understand. But despite those differences… well, he’s already gone and fallen in love, hasn’t he? He couldn’t help it. He didn’t even notice it happening, really. One day, he just realized that he loved Lance, and that there was nothing he could do about it.

“How come?” Keith asks, finding himself playing with the material of his shorts. Twisting it around his finger. Trying not to reveal anything.

“I guess most of us don’t have time,” Lance says thoughtfully. “When mermaids mate, we mate for life. And it isn’t for love. It’s based on important traits and who the chief thinks will make the best match that year.”

The thought of Lance being chosen and shunted off on some other mermaid, someone he doesn’t even love, has Keith feeling sick. It’s obvious that love is something Lance really wants, from the way he’d squealed at the confession in the book to the soft, desperate tension in his voice as he’d revealed how much he wanted that for himself.

“And you can’t refuse?” Keith asks.

Lance shakes his head.

“Not even if you’re in love?”

“Only if you’re mated,” Lance says. “No one can refute that claim, not even the chief. But I’ve never even known anyone who was in love before. Have you?” he asks suddenly.

“Yeah,” Keith says softly. He can think of one person, at least.

“But humans don’t mate for life,” Lance correctly guesses. Keith nods. “So who decides who you end up with?”

“We decide,” Keith says gently. “We fall in love, and then we decide to stay together.”

Lance’s eyes are positively shining. His hands are on the rock between Keith’s legs, and Keith can feel his pinkies touching the inside of Keith’s knees. He can feel the tension in Lance’s body in those two fingers alone.

“Have you… ” Lance says slowly. “Are you with someone right now?”

Keith almost moves, almost draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, but he doesn’t want to cut off the contact between him and Lance. Besides, he isn’t exactly vulnerable right now, he realizes. Lance is asking out of curiosity, not malice.

“No,” Keith says simply. “I haven’t… I’ve been alone, most of my life,” he says simply. “My mom died before I was old enough to remember her, and my dad died when I was still young. I lived in foster homes, for a few years, but eventually I ran away and ended up here.”

“Woah,” Lance whispers. “When humans’ parents die, your community doesn’t raise you?”

“Not really,” Keith says. “If I had extended family, they might’ve taken me in. But the government took care of things.”

“That’s horrible,” Lance says, because he always speaks his mind and never holds anything back. Except Keith can tell he’s not speaking out of pity. He’s just empathizing. He’s just Lance.

“It’s not too bad,” Keith decides. “I made a life for myself here. I have a home and a job. And if I hadn’t wound up here, I never would’ve met you.”

Lance’s mouth drops open, his eyes widen, and then his expression morphs into this dopey smile. He rests his cheek on top of Keith’s leg for a moment, just staring up at him. Because while Lance is Keith’s only friend, Keith is sure that he isn’t Lance’s only friend. Which means that despite all the other friends Lance has, he  _ chooses _ to hang out with Keith. And that’s incredibly special in its own right.

Lance pushes himself out of the water, suddenly. Not all the way, but so that he’s eye-level with Keith, his hands planted between Keith’s legs as he holds himself up effortlessly.

“So humans get to fall in love with whoever they want,” Lance says, nothing able to sway his one-track mind.

“Yes,” Keith agrees.

“So how do you prove it, then? How do humans show their love?”

Time seems to slow down, for a moment. Or maybe pause entirely. There’s Lance, before him, just looking at him earnestly and openly, face full of curiosity and it’s the most endearing thing every time Keith sees it. Meanwhile Keith’s mind is whirling at a million miles per hour, because he can think of a few things. Proposals, mainly. The act of telling someone you love them so much that you want to spend the rest of your lives together, devoted to one another.

But a much simpler answer comes to mind, almost immediately after that one. It’s what would’ve happened next in the book if Lance hadn’t slapped it out of his hand. It’s something that Keith wants to do right now, something he’s wanted to do for a while.

Swallowing his fear, Keith manages to say, “Well… like this.” And then, gently and carefully, he brings his hands up to Lance’s face and leans forward, pressing their lips together. Lance’s are wet and taste of saltwater, but they’re warm despite this, and they’re open and pliant against Keith’s, a shaky breath escaping him.

When Keith pulls away, Lance’s eyes are still open, and his tongue flicks out over his lips, as if to chase the taste of Keith’s own. “What was that?” he whispers. He’s closer than he was before. He leaned in as Keith leaned back, and Keith does nothing to widen the space between them now.

_ A confession,  _ Keith thinks. “A kiss,” he says.

“I—” Lance mouth works wordlessly. “Can we… do that again?” 

Keith’s heart is pounding in his chest. Lance is so close, the space between them so hot, so charged. His mind is silent, but his mouth moves on its own accord. 

“Just follow my lead,” he says.

Keith places his hands on Lance’s face for the second time, guiding Lance down a little, his eyes slipping shut, his heart banging against his ribs. And then, slow and careful, he brings their lips together, just barely pressing against Lance’s with his own.

Lance reacts, this time. He responds to Keith, his mouth moving against him, a little shy and a little eager. Despite the fact that mermaids apparently don’t kiss, it must still be ingrained in their DNA, because Lance picks it up quickly. He moves with Keith, their lips sliding against each other, and when Keith runs his tongue against Lance’s lip, Lance gasps against him.

When Keith pulls away, he rests his hands behind him, leaning back, and it takes Lance another couple of seconds to open his eyes.

“Good?” Keith asks.

“More,” says Lance.

“What?”

“More,” Lance repeats. “Do that again, please. I want it more.”

Keith resists the urge to splutter, goosebumps rising all along his arms. “You sure?”

Lance nods fervently, so Keith gets closer, cupping his face more firmly this time, and kisses him for the third time. Lance is slow and tentative, and when Keith tries to deepen the kiss, Lance doesn’t get it, his mouth staying firmly closed.

“Open your mouth,” Keith murmurs, and when Lance does, he licks into it, surprising a sound out of Lance, halfway between a gasp and a moan. Keith swallows that noise as he tries to embed it in his memory forever.

Keith trails his tongue over Lance’s fangs, careful but inexplicably curious, and Lance gasps against his mouth, opening his own wider to allow Keith to continue. And then Keith kisses Lance again, capturing his lower lip between his teeth, and Lance outright moans. His hand moves from the ground beside Keith, gripping just below his knee in desperation as he tries to push himself closer to Keith.

And Keith, for all the times he’s complained about getting into the water and getting his clothes wet, ignores that voice at the back of his mind now. He shoves off the wall and into the water, wrapping his legs around Lance to stay afloat as he kisses him deeper still, Lance moaning into his mouth as the space between them becomes nonexistent. 

Lance’s hands touch him everywhere. They run through his hair, making water drip down his face, and slide down his neck, to his shoulders. They flit along his arms, squeeze around his waist, and slide under his shirt. There’s no space between them so his hands slide backward, rucking up Keith’s shirt as he touches him all along his back, tracing his spine up and then back down, pausing curiously at his pants.

For the first time, Keith doesn’t try to bat his hands away.

When Lance pulls away for just a second to catch his breath — he keeps seeming to forget he needs to breathe, his gills flapping uselessly against his throat — Keith takes advantage of the distance to kiss Lance elsewhere. He drags his lips against the corner of his jaw, toward the hollow below his ear, and down his neck. His lips just barely graze over Lance’s gills when Lance jerks against him with a gasp, his fingers digging bruisingly into Keith’s arms.

“Oh my God,” he says, so Keith does it again, kissing the sensitive skin and then, carefully, flicking his tongue over it. Lance shudders against him, breathing raggedly, and his gills twitch against his neck in an aborted attempt to draw in a breath. Keith drags his lips over them again before ducking down to kiss against Lance’s collarbone. His tongue laves against the skin, his teeth scraping against it, before he sucks it into his mouth.

Lance whimpers, his arms going around Keith and crushing him to his chest, which Keith takes as a good sign. His toes scramble against the rocks beneath him as he tries desperately to maintain his balance, doing his best to give Lance a hickey at the base of his throat. Lance’s head is tilted all the way back, and when Keith pulls away to admire his handiwork, Lance drifts backward enough to look him in the face, his eyes unfocused and his lips red.

“I never knew these were sensitive,” he says, his finger coming up to trail along his gills.

Keith grins. “You’re welcome.”

“Is your phone in your pocket?” Lance adds, unprompted, and Keith panics, his head whipping around to look around the cave. Thankfully, he sees his phone, undamaged, up on top of their stack of books, safely out of the water.

“No, thank God,” he says. When he looks back at Lance, Lance is frowning.

“Then what is that?” Lance says.

“What’s what?” Keith says, or starts to say, before Lance’s hand slips between them and grabs his cock casually, making Keith jerk with a gasp, his eyes fluttering shut. He manages to shove Lance’s hand away despite every nerve in his body suggesting that he let it stay there, and he rips his eyes back open to look at Lance, shaking his head.

“Nothing’s in my pockets,” he says, and Lance scoffs.

“Uh, there is,” he says. “I just grabbed it. It was poking me this whole time.”

“Lance,” Keith says, embarrassed, and then Lance grabs him by the hips and lifts him out of the water, setting him back on the edge of the pool. He’s completely soaked, aside from the shoulders of his T-shirt, and his clothes are pressed to his body completely, hiding nothing. Even if his pants were dry, he probably wouldn’t be able to hide the very obvious arousal evident at his crotch.

“See?” Lance says, staring down at his lap in scrutiny. “You must’ve forgotten it was in here. Will it be water damaged?”

Keith looks at the ceiling, because it’s too embarrassing to look at Lance while he’s staring at his crotch like that. “There’s nothing in my pockets,” Keith insists again. “It’s part of me.”

Lance, ever curious, lights up at that. “It’s part of you?” he asks, trailing his finger along it again. He brings his mouth down and kisses it, through Keith’s shorts, and Keith sucks in a breath, his hands clenching into fists against the ground beside him.

Lance keeps kissing him, oblivious, and Keith doesn’t blame him. He just learned what kissing is. And Keith wants to kiss Lance all over his body, so maybe Lance feels the same.

That’s when Lance looks up, and there must be something unusual on his face, because Lance stops. His hand replaces his mouth, his fingers trailing over his new discovery, slowly driving Keith to madness.

“Why do you look like that?” he asks.

“What do I look like?”

Lance hums, thoughtful. “Kind of like you want to cry,” he decides. “But not exactly.”

“I don’t want to cry,” Keith confirms. “It’s just — I’m really sensitive, there.”

“In a good way?”

Keith nods, fervent, and Lance’s fingers sneak up to the button on Keith’s pants, which Keith’s knocked his hands away from countless times. Lance was almost as fascinated by buttons and zippers as he was by the concept of Keith hiding part of his body beneath his clothes.

“Can I take these off?” Lance asks, his fingers tightening on his pants almost possessively, and Keith can’t do anything but nod.

Lance makes quick work of the button and zipper, and his fingers hook under the waistline before he looks up at Keith. When Keith nods a second time, Lance clears his throat. “Can you take your shirt off, too?” he asks, and Keith just goes ahead and peels it off right away. 

Satisfied, Lance starts tugging on his shorts, and Keith lifts his butt up to allow him to pull them off.

“I forgot you wore second pants,” Lance says.

“Underwear,” Keith corrects.

“Right,” says Lance. And then, making Keith suck in a breath, he grabs the hem and lowers his mouth to them, biting them and ripping them off.

Keith gapes at him. “You shredded my underwear,” he says.

“Second pants are stupid,” Lance confirms, before peeling his underwear away and staring hard at his crotch. Keith feels himself growing redder the longer Lance stares.

“You shouldn’t bother with clothes,” Lance finally says, and his hand sneaks forward again, his finger trailing tentatively over Keith’s cock. He’s looking at all of him, his gaze tripping over his body before coming back to what’s directly in front of his face, before he finally looks up to meet Keith’s eyes. “You’re beautiful.”

“Lance,” Keith says, and it’s half a laugh and half just  _ soft _ , because only Lance could say something that genuinely.

“Why is it on the outside, though?” Lance continues. His hand wraps around his cock, just holding it, and Keith has to restrain every nerve in his body to not buck up into his hand. “Why do you leave something so sensitive in such a vulnerable position?”

“I don’t know,” Keith says weakly. “That’s just how it is. Yours is hidden?”

“Protected,” Lance corrects. His tongue flicks out, curious, and laps over the head of Keith’s cock. Keith groans, his stomach muscles tightening at the sensation and the sheer effort of holding himself back. Lance has no idea what he’s doing to him.

...Right?

“I’ve never felt like this,” Lance says. “Like…” he swallows, and his eyes finally make their way back to Keith’s. Keith can’t even describe what he sees in them, just that they’re wide and desperate and full of some unnamed emotion. “Like I really like being with you, and I miss you when I’m not with you. And right now, I feel all — just like…  _ desperate _ .”

Keith smiles, and he knows it looks fond and gentle on his face. It feels that way, at least. “Aroused?” he guesses, ignoring the first part. He’s pretty sure there’s a good name for that feeling. He’ll see if Lance can get to the answer on his own, though.

“ _ Yeah _ ,” Lance breathes. “I want you, really bad. How do humans have sex?”

Keith freezes, his brain attempting to power back on in the midst of everything he’s feeling at the moment. But he knows this is important. Knows this could have a huge impact on Lance, so he forces himself to concentrate and find the words.

“I want you too,” he says honestly. “But… are you sure about this?” he asks. “I mean, don’t you guys mate for life? Would you really want to do that with me?”

Lance grips Keith’s knees, pushing them apart so that he can slide in between them, which is totally dirty and arousing, not that Lance would understand that. He uses Keith as leverage to push himself up, so that his face is above Keith’s and Keith is forced to look up at him.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” Lance says seriously, and when he kisses Keith — moving in quickly but slowing down considerably once he gets there — Keith melts against him. “Was that okay?” Lance asks.

“Absolutely,” Keith assures him.

“Can I keep kissing you?”

“Whenever you want,” Keith says, so Lance kisses him again, more forcefully this time, and Keith holds him as close as possible.

Lance breaks out of his arms soon after, however, finding himself with something much more important to do. He pushes Keith to the rock, surging out of the water beside him so that he can loom over Keith.

“Lance,” Keith whispers, because he longs to have him in his arms, pressed against his mouth, but Lance shushes him, pushing his hair out of his eyes and tucking it behind his ears.

“Just a minute,” Lance murmurs. “I just want to look at you.”

Keith props himself up on his elbows, watching as Lance’s eyes trail over him, his fingers following shortly behind them. He touches him everywhere, despite the fact that he’s seen most of Keith before. But they’ve never done anything like this…

Lance has touched him before, sure. He’s held his hand, or wrapped an arm around his waist, in order to drag him through the water. He’s touched Keith’s shoulders, forcing him under water just to watch him splutter in surprise when he resurfaces. He’s twirled his fingers through Keith’s hair, lamenting over the softness of it, over how it looks so different when it’s dry.

Now, he touches him carefully. Meticulously. He wants to examine everything, and he does.

His fingers trail over Keith’s ears, so different from Lance’s, flesh instead of fin, and they tug curiously at his earlobes. He touches Keith’s neck, lingering extra long over the places where his gills would be if he had them. He dips into the hollow of Keith’s collarbone, traces his finger down Keith’s chest and circles around his nipples, making Keith arch up into his hands.

Firmly, but gently, Lance presses him back into the rock, tracing down the center of Keith’s stomach, then back up and over to the sides of his ribs, where Lance also has gills.

His hands come back down, hugging his hip bones and moving right past where Keith wants him most. Lance must know this, because Keith just barely twitches as Lance ignores him, a ghost of a smile gracing Lance’s lips.

Lance has to maneuver his body to touch Keith anywhere else, and he ends up pushing himself along the cave floor with his hands only to end up in the water again. He floats before Keith, regarding his feet as curiously as he always does, and in order to examine him further up, he grabs Keith by the ankles and pulls him toward the water.

Keith slides easily with Lance’s strength, as Lance touches and mouths at his ankles, his calves, and pays special attention to his knees, having admired the fact that Keith’s body bent here many times. And then he grabs Keith by the knees again, dragging him further down in order to trail his fingers up one thigh and his mouth over the other, pausing when both were at Keith’s hips again.

“Lance,” Keith says again, now propped up on his hands and looking desperately at him. Lance just uses his grip on Keith’s body to push himself out of the water. He speaks with his lips pressed against Keith’s own, every word almost a kiss between them.

“I need to concentrate, Keith,” he says. “I have a  _ very interesting  _ part of your body to examine next.”

Keith groans, and Lance satisfies him with a real kiss, gentle and loving at first, and just barely deepening before Lance is pulling away and sinking back into the water.

He still doesn’t touch Keith’s cock the way Keith really wants him to. It’s all light and teasing, not that Keith thinks he’s doing it on purpose. It’s the same way he touched the rest of Keith’s body, but it’s driving Keith insane, leaving him twitching with precum gleaming at the tip of his cock, threatening to drip down the side.

Lance trails his fingers over and around it, his mouth descending in order to press a kiss to the very top of it, and Keith gasps in a breath, clenching his hands into fists to keep himself from fisting them in Lance’s hair instead.

And then Lance's curious hands lead him lower, until he’s holding Keith’s balls in his hands almost as if he’s comparing the weight of them, his touch so careful, so gentle, as he ducks down and mouths at them, his tongue sneaking out to lave over them both.

Keith’s moan echoes loudly in the cave, and Lance’s ears twitch against the side of his head as he tips his chin back up, his eyes taking in Keith’s face, the haze in his eyes and the dusting of red over his cheeks.

“You’re  _ really  _ sensitive here,” Lance acknowledges, bringing himself back up, his tongue dragging behind him and over Keith’s cock. He ends at the top, level with Keith’s belly button, and moves to kiss his stomach from there, pressing kisses up his abs, flicking his tongue over Keith’s nipple, nipping at the base of his throat.

This time when he kisses Keith, Keith deepens it right away, his hands coming up to grab the sides of Lance’s face and keep him there. He can feel his cock pressing against Lance’s stomach like this, and when Lance manages to break the kiss, he slides back into the water, Keith’s cock making contact with his body the entire time.

Only once Lance has successfully examined every inch of him, even testing whether he could maneuver Keith’s cock, meaning he pressed down on the head before letting go, watching it spring back up to slap against his stomach, is he satisfied. He wraps his long fingers around Keith and starts moving his hand in earnest, all while Keith plants his hands behind him and tries to keep from bucking into Lance’s fist, sweat gleaming on his chest and his stomach twitching as pleasure swoops through his belly.

“Fuck,” Keith gasps, his head hanging back on his shoulders as he becomes well acquainted with the ceiling of the cave. “Don’t stop!”

“You’re blushing,” Lance says, sounding amazed. “All the way down to your chest.”

Hearing that only makes Keith flush harder, his toes curling in the water as Lance’s hand speeds up over him, the sound of his hand and Keith’s breaths deafening in the cave.

“Look at me,” Lance says. “I want to see you.”

It takes an embarrassing amount of effort, but Keith tilts his head back down to look at Lance, whose mouth drops open.

“Your eyes…” he says. “I want you to look at me like that all the time.”

“Okay,” Keith agrees, breathless, and he whimpers when Lance runs his thumb over the head of his cock, having already found the most sensitive parts of him in his examination.

Lance licks the tip of his cock almost immediately after his thumb leaves it, and Keith makes a sound that could almost pass as being Lance’s name. Lance doesn’t stop after that, his tongue licking and twirling around the head of his cock as he continues to jerk him off.

“Wanna put you in my mouth,” Lance says, his lips not leaving Keith for a second, and Keith moans at the mere idea.

“Please,” he manages. “Just be careful with your teeth.”

Lance hums in agreement, and his hand slows slightly, until finally it’s just resting at the base of his cock while his lips press against the tip of it. Then, Lance pops the head of Keith’s cock into his mouth without hesitation, his teeth carefully sheathed behind his lips. Keith moans, and Lance laves his tongue against the head of his cock while it’s inside his mouth. Keith can’t keep his eyes open any longer, the lids sliding shut as he succumbs to darkness, to the feeling of Lance’s mouth around his cock.

He begins to bop, carefully at first, and slow. Just sinking down and getting a feel for it, for having Keith in his mouth, further and further until Keith feels himself hit the back of Lance’s throat, a keening moan escaping him.

“Holy shit,” he says. “Don’t you h-have a gag reflex?”

Lance pulls off, staring at him curiously. “What’s that?” he says.

“Never mind,” Keith gasps, and his stomach swoops with pleasure as Lance sinks down on him again. He slides upward painfully slow, his tongue pressed to the underside of Keith’s cock. And he continues like that, slow and torturous. Up, down — up, down. Finally, Keith realizes that Lance isn’t going to speed up unless he tells him to. He can’t tell whether it’s deliberate on Lance’s part.

He peels his eyes open, looking down at Lance blearily, and manages, “Faster, Lance, please!”

Lance looks up at him, blinks once in understanding, and starts to bob his head at a faster pace, making Keith moan and attempt to dig his fingers into something, anything, but there’s only cave and rock and water around him. And then Lance reaches underneath him with his free hand, his fingers massaging his balls, and Keith falls back onto the cave floor, unable to hold himself up anymore.

His feet scramble against the edge of the pool’s wall for purchase, trying desperately to find leverage to let him arch into Lance’s mouth. His moans are bouncing off the cavern’s walls, embarrassingly loud and yet he can’t stop them, can’t stop gasping and panting for breath as Lance sucks him into his mouth, the sound obscene and just as loud in their little cave.

“Lance, fuck!” Keith cries, his mouth hanging open and his eyes clenched shut. His feet finally find purchase and his back arches off the ground, his hips with it, and Lance tugs down on his balls just hard enough to keep him from going any higher, his grip firm enough to act as a warning.

Keith whines low in his throat, wondering how the fuck Lance is this good at this, at something he’s never even done before, but he can’t even begin to formulate a theory. All he can do is lay there and pant, desperate for more, desperate for air, desperate for Lance.

“Lance,” Keith moans, which is an accident this time because he’s actually trying to communicate, not babble. “W-wait.”

“Mmm?” Lance says, and the sound reverberates through Keith and makes him keen, his nails scrabbling against the rock beneath him. It’s cold, but Lance’s mouth is so hot, and the difference in sensations only helps to drive him closer to the edge.

Lance doesn’t stop, though. He only slows down, his eyes wide and curious as he stares up at Keith.

Keith opens his mouth to try to say more but all that escapes is a gasp, and he’s so close, can feel it rushing through him, and his eyes clench shut again as he moans.

Finally, Lance pulls off, just far enough so that all Keith can feel is Lance’s breath as he speaks. “Do you want me to stop?”

“If you don’t, I’ll cum,” Keith says.

Lance just stares at him. “Do you want me to stop?” he repeats.

Keith’s near delirious with arousal, his cock twitching beneath Lance’s lips, and he shakes his head against the floor. He hasn’t even managed to voice his answer before Lance is back on him, sucking him down desperately. He starts moving faster, sucking harder, and Keith’s moans grow louder and louder as he tumbles toward the edge, unable to stop it.

He reaches the peak and practically sobs his release, cumming in Lance’s mouth and trembling against the cavern floor, his heels digging into the wall beneath the water as he jerks helplessly into Lance’s mouth, who keeps sucking on him, keeps bobbing his head past Keith’s release, and he becomes sensitive and twitchy in his mouth.

Keith’s limbs feel limp and dead, but Lance is still going, probably not understanding that Keith is oversensitive right now, and he presses himself into a sitting position, gently lifting Lance’s head upward. He slides out of Lance’s mouth with a pop and Lance licks his lips, looking up at him.

“Lance,” Keith breathes, incredibly fond. “That was amazing.”

“Yeah?” Lance asks, and then grabs his cock  _ again _ to keep stroking. Keith gasps, twitching and reaching for Lance’s wrist.

“I finished,” he tries to explain.

“I want to see it happen, this time,” Lance says, dodging Keith’s attempts to stop him.

“I’m really sensitive right now,” Keith insists, when Lance grabs his wrist and pins it.

“So I won’t see it?” Lance pouts, and starts stroking harder, faster, making Keith whine and bend forward, his head landing on Lance’s shoulder as he curls in on himself, his body overwhelmed with pleasure and sensitivity, fighting for both more and less at the same time.

“S-stop,” he manages to whisper, and Lance does, frowning petulantly. “I can go again in a little bit, if you want to see. Just not right now.”

“Good,” Lance says, satisfied, and that’s when Keith manages to peel himself away, looking down at Lance.

“C’mere,” Keith says. “I want to be closer to you.”

Normally, Lance would try to fight him on this. Not the fact that Keith wanted to be closer, but the fact that he’d rather have Keith in the water. This time, however, he comes willingly. He pushes himself up, dripping water all over Keith, and settles down beside him, laying on his back.

Immediately, Keith twists to face him, laying on his side as he rests his head on Lance’s shoulder, slinging his leg over Lance’s tail.

He feels gooey and soft and horribly in love, and he can’t help pressing kisses to Lance’s shoulder and chest every few seconds or so. Lance’s hand is in his hair, his fingers scratching gently at his scalp, as Keith’s fingers trail over his chest, drawing patterns in the droplets left there.

When he touches Lance’s nipple, Lance sucks in a breath, and Keith nudges his cheek onto Lance’s shoulder in order to see his face better. Lance’s mouth is open, just barely, and his eyes have already found Keith’s.

“Feels good?” Keith asks, tracing over it again, and Lance’s eyelashes flutter.

“Yeah,” he says carefully, so Keith does it again, tracing around it before bringing his fingers together to pinch the nub, gently. Lance’s fingers dig into his hair, just barely, and Keith can’t bring himself to stop. He wants to find every sensitive part of Lance, just like Lance did to him.

So he brings his hand up to Lance’s ears, which have always been fascinating to him. He traces over the edge of the fin, and then over the thin membrane, watching curiously as it twitches at his touch. He traces the scales on the sides of Lance’s face, presses his thumbs to the glowing marks beneath his eyes.

And then he explores lower, dragging his fingers carefully over the gills of Lance’s neck, which he already knows are sensitive. Again, they flutter at his touch, and Keith continues to trace them as he reaches lower to tweak Lance’s nipple again, drawing a quiet moan out of Lance.

The gills on the sides of Lance’s ribs are less sensitive, at least until Keith brings his mouth to them, and then Lance is twisting to the side to give him better access, and Keith makes sure to kiss every inch of it.

He ends up crawling down Lance’s body, touching the voluminous, wavy fins all at the end of his tail, much thinner and apparently more sensitive than the middle of it, which is riddled with scales, thinner at the bottom.

At Lance’s waist, the scales grow thin once more, becoming translucent and then nonexistent as they merge into his skin. The rest are thick and hard, except for a relatively thin patch right in the middle of his tail, about where his legs would separate if he had them.

And as Keith traces over these thinner scales experimentally, Lance moans, loud and abrupt, and Keith’s head whips to look at him.

“Is this okay?” Keith asks, pausing in his ministrations.

Lance peels his eyes open, his irises bright and gleaming with desperation. “Really,  _ really  _ okay,” he assures him, and Keith continues to touch him there, just trailing his fingers back and forth, experimenting with the pressure and direction in which he strokes all the while.

It’s while he’s stroking upward from the base of this area, pressing a little harder than he had before, that his fingers just barely dip into a slit that he hadn’t noticed before. It’s wet and warm, and when he looks up at Lance, Lance is bleary-eyed with pleasure.

In the moment that he wasn’t looking, Lance’s own cock slipped free of what must’ve been a pocket. It’s long and tentacle-like and  _ still coming out _ as Keith watches, though he looks back to Lance when he hears him clear his throat.

Lance is blushing prettily, his gaze fixed stubbornly on the wall of the cave before it flicks to the ceiling, and then the opposite wall. Anywhere but Keith, really.

“You’re sure this is okay?” Keith asks, and Lance finally looks straight at him.

“Yes,” he says. Whispers, more accurately. “It’s just… no one has ever seen me like this, before,” he says quietly.

Keith abandons his attempt to touch every part of Lance, just for a moment, so that he can crawl up his body and hover over him.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells him. “I thought that the moment I first saw you, and I’ve thought it more and more with every passing day.” He kisses Lance, gentle and slow, and Lance’s hands capture his face and keep him there.

“Same with you,” he says, and Keith reaches up to press his thumb against Lance’s lower lip, to drag it over his sharp teeth, because he’ll never stop being amazed at every single aspect of him.

“If it’s okay, I really want to touch you,” Keith says. “I want to make you feel as good as you made me feel.”

Lance moans, his head nodding rapidly, and Keith scoots back down his body, straddling his tail this time. Keith no more than wraps his hand around the appendage before it curls around his hand entirely, stroking his hand as much as he’s stroking it.

“Oh my God,” Lance whispers, his mouth open and his flush racing down his neck, down his chest. He reaches out a hand and Keith grabs it instinctively, and Lance uses Keith’s grip to pull himself upright and press his face into Keith’s shoulder, shuddering. “That’s way different than when I do it,” he breathes, his breath hot against Keith’s skin.

“Are you controlling it?” Keith asks, watching in rapt fascination.

“Yes,” Lance admits, pressing his face harder into Keith’s shoulder. “It feels so good.”

Keith’s breath shudders out of him. “I want you inside me,” he says, without really thinking about it, and Lance moans into his shoulder. His mouth opens and his teeth press against Keith’s skin, not hard enough to pierce, but like he wants to.

“Please,” he says. “I want that too, Keith, please let me — please can we—"

“Yes,” Keith interrupts, and he slides his hand off of Lance — his whole hand wet and slimy with slick, thanks to Lance’s own cock — and he spreads his legs, reaching behind himself to quickly push two fingers inside.

“What are you doing?” Lance asks, breathless, his eyes roving over Keith.

“Stretching myself,” Keith answers.

“I can do that,” Lance says, staring at him earnestly.

Keith looks to his hands, his fingers ending in little pointed claws, and considers them warily. Lance, seeing him looking, presses a kiss to his chin.

“Not my hands,” he says. “I’ll stretch you with my cock. It tapers,” he adds, as if he needs to convince Keith. But Keith’s already slipping his fingers back out of himself, because the sooner he can have Lance inside him the better, and he plants his hands on Lance’s stomach once Lance lays back down, propping himself up on his elbows.

Keith hovers over him, tense with wanting, and Lance is watching him with obvious need, apparent in the hitch of his breath, in the intensity of his gaze.

He just barely lowers himself toward Lance’s cock, and the second Lance’s cock touches his skin, it starts moving. Searching, pressing, moving at Lance’s will, looking for a hole to fuck into, and then it finds Keith’s. It catches on the rim of his asshole and slides in slowly, Lance true to his promise.

He stretches Keith carefully, patiently, despite the desire rampaging through both of them. His cock works in and out of Keith, gentle and slow and just the very tip of it, Keith’s sure. He’s shaking above Lance, his body straining to just slam down and take all of him, until finally Keith can’t take it anymore.

“I need you, Lance,” he gasps. “I’m stretched enough, just fuck me, please!"

Lance moans, his fingers digging into Keith’s knees, and he finally gives them what they both want. His cock plunges in immediately, longer and thicker than anything Keith’s ever fucked before.

Keith moans, clenching around the intrusion, and Lance’s cock starts fucking him quickly, moving in and out of him, swirling inside him and stretching and pressing. Lance finds his prostate with ease, and he massages it steadily after Keith gasps and clenches around him, and Keith can’t help fucking himself on Lance, gasping for breath.

But where Keith’s gone wild and near delirious with pleasure, the opposite is true for Lance. He becomes determined and concentrated, his gaze intense and his movements methodic as he fucks Keith, trying (and succeeding) to pleasure him to the best of his ability. Although these little gasps and moans are escaping him, he’s mostly just laying there, watching Keith with those sharp eyes and smirking as he fucks Keith easily. His tail curls up behind Keith, the angle changing the pressure of his cock inside of him and making Keith cry out.

He thinks it’s impossible for it to get any better, because he’s already being fucked better than he ever has, and the way Lance is staring at him, smirking at him, makes him feel like he’s going to combust. But then he feels this pressure on his cock, and when he looks down, it isn’t Lance’s hand. It’s a second dick, escaping from the same hole as the first and jerking him off steadily even as the other fucks him.

“Lance!” Keith cries out, gasping and arching toward the new sensation. “Fuck — you have  _ two _ ?”

“Yeah,” Lance breathes, managing a gasping laugh. Keith moans, fucking forward into the tentacle on his cock and then backward onto the one inside him. It’s insane, otherworldly, and his body can’t decide between the sensations — he just ends up bucking back and forth, fucking forward and backward in an attempt to chase both sensations at the same time.

It’s impossible to pace himself, impossible to slow down, and he cums with barely any warning, jerking against and around Lance as he cums even harder than the first time, gasping desperately for breath as Lance moans in response, that cool exterior finally breaking as his eyes slip shut.

And then, with Keith successfully satisfied, Lance’s second dick slides off his cock, teasingly around his balls, and then, slowly, further back. Keith tenses for a second, realizing what’s about to happen a second before it does, and it forces its way in beside the first one. It burns as it slides in, even as Keith moans from the pleasure and overstimulation, the first one still rubbing determinedly at his prostate, and Keith falls forward, landing on his hands and knees over Lance.

Lance’s tail follows him, raising higher over Keith, and he can see the end of it behind Lance’s head, whose eyes are closed and mouth gasped open. His second cock finally slides the rest of the way in, and they’re both so wet that they fit easily, now, fucking Keith faster and harder than before, and he jerks back against them, so sensitive and yet not wanting it to stop.

“Keith,” Lance breathes, and when he opens his eyes, they’re glowing brighter than usual, looking at Keith in desperation.

“Do whatever you need,” Keith says. “I got you.”

Lance moans, desperate, and in one swift motion, he manages to roll them into the water, not slipping outside of Keith for even a second. He presses Keith against the wall of the pool, no doubt wanting to drag Keith to the bottom but aware that Keith needs to breathe, and he fucks him from behind, now, his cocks somehow fucking him even harder now that they’re in the water.

He buries his head against Keith’s shoulder, one arm tight around Keith’s waist and the other gripping hard on the edge of the pool, keeping them there. Keith’s gasping, his prostate more sensitive than it’s ever been, and he thinks he might be able to cum again, like this.

That’s when Lance moans, and his mouth opens against Keith’s shoulder, his teeth lingering there lightly, and he whines.

“Do it,” Keith whispers, feeling the want, the  _ need _ , in every fiber of Lance’s body. Lance’s teeth sink into him, and the pleasure-pain sends Keith over the edge a third time, his gasping moans deafening in the cave and his body twitching weakly around Lance.

Lance is shaking and shuddering behind him, his hand flitting over Keith’s chest and stomach under the water as he moans against Keith’s shoulder, and Keith thinks that he’s coming too.

Finally, Lance opens his mouth, and his tongue laves against Keith’s skin, the ache melting away with his gentle kisses. And then, carefully, his cocks slide out from him, though Lance’s hand remains, dragging lazily over Keith’s body, tracing patterns on his skin under the water.

Lance’s other hand retreats from the edge of the pool and then he’s hugging Keith to him, pressing kisses to his shoulder and neck and the corner of his jaw. Keith hums, lolling back against him tiredly, and they drift away from the wall, drift out of the cave, and when Keith wakes up, they’re laying on the beach together, intertwined under the endless starry sky.

“Did we just mate?” Keith asks, and Lance sucks in a breath, hugging Keith to him a little tighter.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers quickly. “It doesn’t mean anything on your end, I promise—”

“It does,” Keith insists. “And don’t be sorry. I’m not upset.”

Lance falls silent, and when Keith glances over at him, he’s looking at him with wide, hopeful eyes. There’s a grin on his face, and Lance hides it by looking up at the sky, so Keith follows suit. Lance taught him all the constellations months ago, and now he can pick them out with ease.

“Hey, Keith?” Lance says softly, his fingers tracing over his hip.

“Yeah?”

“Is this what love feels like?”

Keith smiles, tearing his gaze away from the sky easily and finding Lance already looking at him, his eyes shining even brighter than the stars above. He leans over him, pressing his lips to Lance’s tenderly, lovingly, and when he pulls away, Lance’s eyes are brimming with realization.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “It is.”


End file.
